Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is a military controlled area, where all the news are filtered by the military and the Bangladeshi government.CHT, where blood has shed for decades and hopes were burnt to ashes by the brutes, constitutes of people who want their voice to be heard. We are here to ensure that the voice of these unheard victims in CHT echo around the world despite the Bangladeshi government trying to suppress them in the biased state run media.
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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Peace Accord: 17 Years onCHT land rights still not settledLand commission amendment bill not passed in 13 years; hill people losing land

Pinaki Roy

Nearly two decades since the signing of the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Peace Accord, the government is nowhere near ensuring the land rights of
the hill people. A key provision of the 1997 accord is to give back
their land taken away from them by government and non-government actors,
but it is a right that exists only on paper.

In all, some one
lakh indigenous families in the three hill districts -- Bandarban,
Rangamati and Khagrachhari -- had lost all or some of their lands. Of
them, around 90,000 families were locally displaced during insurgency
and nearly 10,000 are refugee families repatriated from India following
the deal. They have yet to get back their lands. The repatriated
families totalled 12,212.

Over the years, different government
agencies and Bangalee settlers have occupied the homesteads and agro
lands that once belonged to the Jumma people. The local administration
has also leased out hundreds of acres of land to different individuals
and businesses.

Indigenous leaders say the government has been
dragging its feet over amending the relevant law that will empower the
CHT Land Dispute Resolution Commission to ensure indigenous people's
land rights.

“Land is the most important issue for the
indigenous people. But the government is purposefully dilly-dallying
over resolving the matter,” said Mangal Kumar Chakma, publication
secretary of the Parbtya Chattagram Jana Sanghaty Samity (PCJSS), which
signed the peace accord with the government. Instead of settling the
issue, different government agencies have also continued to occupy their
land, he alleged.

In 2011 alone, at least 7,118 acres of land
belonging to indigenous people were grabbed by Bangalee settlers in the
three hill districts, according to a 2012 report of Bangladesh Legal Aid
Services Trust (BLAST).

The ruling Awami League was in power
when the deal was signed. Since then, the party has formed two more
governments in 2008 and in January this year. But it has done little so
far to amend the CHT Land Commission Amendment Bill 2001.

Once
passed, the law will solve the issues of land ownership and land
management. But the government has shelved the bill for all these years,
said Mangal Chakma. Moreover, the government is now set to pass some
laws that will go against the spirit of the peace accord itself, alleged
other indigenous leaders.

Asked about the status of the
amendment bill, chief of the House body on the land ministry Rezaul
Karim Hira said he was not aware of it. The previous parliament had sent
the bill to the relevant committee for scrutiny.

Under the
rules, the House cannot pass any bill placed in the previous parliament.
This means, the bill will have to be brought before parliament afresh.
Against this backdrop, PCJSS President Santu Larma has said they would
start a non-cooperation movement from May 1 next year if the treaty is not implemented by then.

STATUS OF CHT LAND

According to the Land Revenue Administration Report of 1965-66, there
were 32,59,520 acres of land in the CHT. Fifty-one percent of them were
declared reserve forest. Of the rest 49 percent, only 1,30,000 acres
were cropland, of which 54,000 acres (40 percent) were submerged due to
the Kaptai dam, constructed for hydropower project in the 1960s in
Rangamati.

The project displaced about a third of the
indigenous population in the district, which was the key reason for the
armed conflicts in the hills. As the indigenous people started to target
the security forces in the late 1970s, the government took up a
programme to drastically increase Bangalee settlements there in efforts
to weaken insurgency.

From 1979 to 1985, some 80,000 families
from the plains were brought to the hills. Each of these families was
given about 10 acres of croplands and hilly lands, indigenous leaders
claim. Most of these lands belonged to the indigenous people, suggest different studies.

'GOVT WORKING'

The government claims it has implemented at least 48 of the 72 peace
pact provisions fully and 15 partially while implementation of nine
other provisions are underway.

“I would say 95 percent
provisions of the peace accord have been implemented. The government is
working to implement the rest within the shortest possible time,” said
Obaidul Muktadir Chowdhury, chief of Parliamentary Standing Committee on
the Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs Ministry.

Contacted, Naba
Bikram Tripura, secretary of the ministry, said implementation of the
treaty was an ongoing process. He said the ministry held a meeting
yesterday on the amendment bill. CHT Minister Bir Bahadur Ushwe
Sing, Santu Larma, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Adviser Gowher Rizvi
and the secretary, among others, attended the meeting.

The CHT
Land Dispute Resolution Commission Act was passed in 2001. So far, six
such commissions have been formed, but none has been functional due to
legal tangles.

Implementation of CHT AccordU-turn by the governmentMangal Kumar Chakma

THIS year marks the passing of 17 years since signing of Chittagong
Hill Tracts (CHT) Accord, 1997 on December 2, 1997, between the
Government of Bangladesh and PCJSS. Since assuming power in 2009, the
Awami League-led grand alliance has not taken any step that is worth
mentioning towards implementation of the core issues of the Accord.
The Awami League government (1996-2001) initially implemented a few
provisions of the CHT Accord. Among them are passing of CHTRC Act and
three HDC Acts in 1998, establishment of CHT Affairs Ministry,
repatriation of Jumma refugees from India, and withdrawal of around 66
temporary camps (though the government claimed withdrawal of 172 camps).
However, the main issues, such as preservation of tribe-inhabited
feature/status of the region; introduction of special governance system
in CHT with CHTRC and HDCs and devolution of powers and functions to
them; resolution of land disputes; demilitarisation, etc. are yet to be
implemented.

The government, including the prime minister, has
been claiming that altogether 48 out of 72 sections of the CHT Accord
have been implemented in the meantime and 15 sections out of the rest
have been partially implemented while the remaining 9 sections are under
implementation process. This is not fully accurate. As per observation
of PCJSS, only 25 sections out of 72 sections of the CHT Accord have
been implemented so far. Thirty four sections of the Accord still remain
totally unimplemented while 13 sections have been partially
implemented. This means that two-third of the sections of the Accord
have been unimplemented as of this day.

For instance, analysis
of Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 under Part-A of the Accord, which the
government says have already been implemented, disproves the
government's claim. Section-1 of the Accord stipulates: ”Both the
parties, having considered the CHT region as a tribe-inhabited region,
recognised the need of preserving special features of this region and
attaining the overall development thereof.” But this aspect still
remains confined to the papers. No legal or effective safeguard measures
have so far been taken to preserve or restore the tribe-inhabited
feature of the region. No office order, directive or notification to
that effect has been passed by the government. As a result, unabated
migration of outsiders into CHT is taking place through different ways
and means, which has led to the loss of the very tribal-inhabited
feature of the region.

The government, on the one hand, has
been dilly-dallying in implementing the core issues of the CHT Accord,
while formulating anti-accord laws and programmes on the other. For
instance, without holding elections in the three HDCs and CHTRC and
contrary to the opinion of the CHT people, the government, on November
23, 2014, amended three HDC Acts by increasing the numerical strength of
the members of three interim HDCs from 5 to 15, including the chairman.
Before signing of the CHT Accord, though the tenure of HDCs had already
expired, the successive governments did not take any initiative to hold
elections for these councils during the last 22 years. No initiative
has yet been undertaken to formulate Election Rules of chairmen and
members of the HDCs and Electoral Roll Rules for the purpose. The
5-member interim HDCs formed with the ruling party members have been
functioning in an undemocratic way. In fact, these nominated interim
HDCs work without any obligation and accountability to the people.
Instead of holding elections for these institutions, the government has
recently amended the laws of these councils to run the HDCs in an unfair
manner. The main objective of making amendments to the three HDC Acts
seems to be to by-pass the elections for the CHT institutions and
deprive the CHT people from their political rights to franchise and
access to representation and, above all, to shelve the implementation of
the CHT Accord tactfully.

Unlike prompt amendment of three HDC
Acts, which was made within six months, amendment of CHT Land Dispute
Resolution Commission Act 2001 has been kept pending for 13 years,
including 6 years of the grand alliance government. This law was passed
in 2001 without consultation with or advice from CHTRC, hence, several
issues contravening CHT Accord were included in it. When the present
government was formed in January 2009, the CHTRC once again sent its
recommendations to it for bringing amendment to this law. After a series
of meetings, CHT Affairs Ministry, in consultation with CHTRC,
finalised 13-point amendment proposals for amendment of the Act, which
was also endorsed by CHT Accord Implementation Committee. But the
government has been delaying in amending the law as per the 13-point
recommendations. Due to non-resolution of land-related disputes in the
CHT, ethnic conflicts and forcible occupation of lands belonging to the
indigenous Jummas continue.

The prompt amendment of HDC Acts on
one hand and delay in amendment of Land Commission Act year after year
on the other, make it look as if the government is not sincere about
implementing the Accord fully. While CHTRC Complex Project has been kept
pending ever since the formation of the apex body of CHT special
administrative setup in 1999, the selection of sites for establishing
medical college and science and technology unversity is another
instance of the government's confusing policy in implementing the CHT
Accord. The government is keen to rehabilitate the poor people through
Ashrayan Project in CHT while measures for rehabilitation of internally
displaced Jumma families have not been taken in the last 17 years,
though it is one of the obligations stipulated in the CHT Accord.

In fact, there cannot be any alternative to implementation of CHT
Accord for ensuring proper political solution to the longstanding crisis
and establishing peace in CHT. CHT people urge the government for a
speedy resolution by drawing up a time-bound roadmap of the
implementation process of the Accord in order to ascertain good
governance and pro-people and environmentally balanced development in
CHT, thereby ensuring peace and all-round development in the region.

About Me

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), home of Jumma Indigenous people, is a military controlled area, where all the news are filtered by the military and the Bangladeshi government. No foreigners are allowed to enter this military zone without obtaining permission from the Bangladeshi government.
CHT, where blood has shed for decades and hopes were burnt to ashes by the brutes, constitutes of people who want their voice to be heard. We are here to ensure that the voice of these unheard victims in CHT echo around the world despite the Bangladeshi government trying to suppress them in the biased state run media.
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